While COVID-19 reminds the most vulnerable of our population of the need for funeral planning, safety concerns may preclude following advice given by both the Death Care industry and the Federal Trade Commission: visit multiple funeral homes and request their general price lists.   The FTC mandated ‘general price list’ provides an itemized description of the

For consumers who need installments to pay for their preneed arrangement, funeral directors report that the $100 monthly payment is the comfort threshold for most individuals.   For a widow planning her own funeral, the $100 monthly payment will require an installment term of six years or longer.  If the widow needs to also cover an

In a prior post, we used Allan Sloan’s article on the Treasury bond market to discuss the impact on preneed insurers and their funeral home clients.  The Treasury market has forced preneed insurers to lower their policy returns, which has a direct impact on the profitability of funeral homes.  To make insurance funding more profitable

In our last post, we used Allan Sloan’s article on the Treasury bond market to highlight the investment exposures to death care trusts.  Today we will look at how the Treasury market is also impacting funeral homes that rely upon insurance for preneed funding.  Mr. Sloan’s article alluded to insurance companies being required by statute

A preneed client recently complained about preneed shortfalls they were experiencing on trust funded contracts.  We went back to our 2014 blog post (The Factors Contributing to Preneed Shortfalls: Investment Return and Operator’s Performance Costs) and began an analysis of those factors.  Since the ‘culprit’ is usually poor investment returns, we started with

When the Federal Reserve recently announced the end of the quantitative easing program, it did so with a hint that any increase in interest rates could be a considerable time off.  Several global factors may now cause interest rates to remain at unprecedented lows for longer than what the Fed had suggested last December.  As

The Memorial Business Journal recently reported on findings from the NFDA’s 2014 Consumer Awareness and Preferences Study.   Some of the findings may not come as much of a surprise to funeral directors, such as consumer demands are changing.  But, findings regarding how many respondents have made efforts to prearrange, and prepay, for funerals were

Since President Obama unveiled the new MyRA as his plan to revive Americans’ saving habits, we have been making comparisons between funding for retirements and preneed.   Like the MyRA, the non-guaranteed preneed contract could represent more of an introduction to preplanning funding than the final preneed product.  As the AARP acknowledged a few years ago,

President Obama used his State of the Union address to unveil a new type of retirement account dubbed “MyRA”.  Recognizing that Americans are woefully unprepared for their retirement years, the President believes the MyRA offers individuals a safe option to induce them to begin saving for those golden years.  A CNBC report provides an explanation